this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 65 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (6 children)

It's charming that the article uses Fahrenheit as a scientific temperature scale, perhaps they should adopt bananas for distance in scientific reports too.

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 35 points 1 month ago (2 children)

you gotta admire the dedication to using the most absurd measurement system though

[–] combat_doomerism@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

farenheit isnt even that bad compared to the other imperial units, what are you talking about lmao

[–] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 2 points 1 month ago

I like fahrenheit for temperature "feel" because 100° is close to body temperature and is also "very hot" when used for outside temp while 0° is "very cold".

100°C is "you are boiling" and 0°C is "pretty cold, but not that bad".

For any calculations or representation of temperature outside the context of human activity though, Celsius is way better.

[–] egonallanon@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We could use rankine just to confuse people more.

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[–] HowAbt2morrow@futurology.today 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

At least it wasn’t measured in campfires or number of hotcakes.

[–] Aquilae@hexbear.net 16 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Damn now I kinda wanna know how many campfires this is equivalent to

[–] fox@hexbear.net 18 points 1 month ago (2 children)

A full burning campfire can hit 2000 F, so this would be about 90,000 of those

[–] Aquilae@hexbear.net 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't think temperature works like that though lol

[–] quarrk@hexbear.net 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

180 million Fahrenheit converts to almost exactly 100 million Kelvin, so I imagine the journalist just converted from Kelvin to get that number. Anyway, using 2000 F ≈ 1,366.48 K gives about 73,000 bonfires.

Temperature does kinda work like this. The Boltzmann constant k_B has units of Joules per Kelvin (energy / temperature). An energy E can has an equivalent temperature T given by setting E = k_B*T. I think it’s good enough to state that 73,000 bonfires would be collectively 73,000 times hotter than one bonfire.

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[–] fen@hexbear.net 11 points 1 month ago

that's honestly less campfires than I'd expect

[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 8 points 1 month ago

The ones hot enough for marshmallows?

[–] bobs_guns@lemmygrad.ml 6 points 1 month ago

It's a fuckton.

[–] comrade_pibb@hexbear.net 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How hot is it in Hot Pocket?

[–] trinicorn@hexbear.net 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] CloutAtlas@hexbear.net 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How many cubits was this sun? At least a furlong right? And how many hogsheads of fuel did it need?

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The sun is 3,007,856,729.2152 cubits in diameter

[–] SpiderFarmer@hexbear.net 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Could be a communication thing. As much as I love the metric system, for frontfacing stuff like articles, scientists have to sometimes use freedom units.

At least that was my experience with school.

[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And that is precisely why the Mars Polar Lander failed.

https://everydayastronaut.com/mars-climate-orbiter/

Face it, the USA has defined the inch as 25.4 mm. It did so in 1933. The country is already metric, it's been metric for 92 years.

It's time.

[–] imogen_underscore@hexbear.net 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

isn't it used by science and the military already lol

[–] vk6flab@lemmy.radio 9 points 1 month ago

Yeah, it's just the rest of the country that needs being brought into the 21st century.

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 11 points 1 month ago

That temperature is hotter than anyone could really imagine to the point that any scale is meaningless

[–] combat_doomerism@hexbear.net 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

farhenheit makes way more sense than the other imperial measurements imo

[–] trinicorn@hexbear.net 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

how so?

arbitrarily setting the freezing point of water to 32 and the boiling point to 212 and then filling in the rest from there isn't what I'd call "making sense"

I guess they're 180 apart but why 32, why not 0 and 180?

[–] combat_doomerism@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

the freezing point was set to the freezing point of brine, not water. doesnt make a lot of sense, but it makes more sense than inches -> feet -> yard -> mile (not to mention league etc.) what the fuck is an inch? who fucking knows, maybe the distance between your knuckles on one of your fingers??? the point is not that farenheit is good, but that the rest of the imperial measurements are even worse

[–] trinicorn@hexbear.net 6 points 1 month ago

yeah, I mean some eutectic brine of ice, water, and camel piss salt seems pretty scienticious to me

if anything, three barleycorns laid end to end might be more sensible lol

[–] CloutAtlas@hexbear.net 8 points 1 month ago

As someone that learned Celsius first, I can intuit Fahrenheit pretty easily in a day to day setting. Can't imagine doing science with it though

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[–] DengistDonnieDarko@hexbear.net 44 points 1 month ago (1 children)

how many football fields is this

[–] Torenico@hexbear.net 28 points 1 month ago

About twelve AR-15s

[–] tactical_trans_karen@hexbear.net 39 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I want to see a demo where they approach it with all the trepidation and seriousness that such an advancement deserves, and pull out a perfectly golden toasted marshmallow.

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[–] LaughingLion@hexbear.net 33 points 1 month ago

cool, this is the one funded by genshin impact lol

[–] AntiOutsideAktion@hexbear.net 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

dead-dove-2 all the comments are about the temperature units

[–] ClathrateG@hexbear.net 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

think of the crypto mining potential!

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 1 month ago

lol only way fusion would get funded in the US 🤣

[–] Saoirse@hexbear.net 22 points 1 month ago

Every time a headline comes out of China reporting major progress in fusion power generation I'm like lt-kitsuragi "God, please."

[–] CrawlMarks@hexbear.net 20 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I feel like in the millions of degrees it is fine to use america numbers. Seeing it in C isn't gonna give anyone a more accurate understanding.

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Or we could use what everyone else uses

[–] CrawlMarks@hexbear.net 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

At 160 million we may as well just be using kelivn.

[–] GalaxyBrain@hexbear.net 24 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Have you considered that it's never okay to use America anything including numbers?

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[–] invalidusernamelol@hexbear.net 3 points 1 month ago

At that scale they're equal

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 1 month ago

lol yeah it's very hot

[–] Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You can divide by two and be roughly correct (÷1.8 even moreso). The offset is negligible.

[–] CrawlMarks@hexbear.net 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Dividing 160million by 1.8 is not gonna help me understand things any better I fear.

[–] shath@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago
[–] Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 month ago

The 1,000-second mark is considered a critical threshold in fusion research. Sustaining plasma for such extended durations is essential for demonstrating the feasibility of operating fusion reactors.

More doubling the previous record is impressive, so I'm not being cynical, but what's special about 1000 seconds? It's not as if the reactor achieved ignition.

This includes providing a clean and abundant energy source to address global energy demands and enabling ambitious endeavors such as deep-space exploration.

I hate how people about Fusion as if it is guaranteed to be some silver bullet to human energy problems. Fusion reactors use pretty exotic materials to build and are very large. And even when the first commercially viable fusion reactor goes online, it will still take a long time for fusion reactors to spread, since solar is so cheap and fossi fuels have an entrenched political regime behind them. Not to mention getting fusion to the global majority will be much harder than getting them solar energy.

As Song Yuntao, director of the Institute of Plasma Physics, emphasized, “Fusion reactions need to reach the order of thousands of seconds to sustain themselves. The latest record marks the first time humanity has simulated conditions necessary for operating fusion reactors in an experimental setup.”

So getting to ignition is based on sustaining the reaction for long enough? Or by "sustain" commercial sustenance is meant?

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